Cracks
by McGonagall's Bola
Summary: She had to go... but the cracks showed when she did.


She went to all of the funerals. There were few people she saw in attendance more than a handful of times as friends and family said goodbye to one of the fallen. Kingsley Shacklebolt, the new Minister for Magic as appointed the evening after the battle had ended was one of those who, like she, attended all. Maybe it was his task as the Minister for Magic, but she never would have imagined Cornelius Oswald Fudge do the same, and, if so, it would only have been because that was expected of him. Kingsley, like her, was there for another reason. Despite the fact that she was not friends or family of most of the fallen, she had still _known_ most of them, taught them… seen them as children with many options and many paths to follow. Minerva McGonagall was there to say goodbye to those people, before they had left the right path behind in their search for something that they had thought could be found as one of Voldemort's followers. She said goodbye to the people they could have become if they hadn't been driven by the idea of power or greed.

She remembered Bellatrix Black very well from her younger years. Despite the fact that she had never been particularly kind to professors or fellow pupils even then, she had at least always been very respectful and had left people alone, unless they gave her reason not to, and then her revenge had never been mild. She remembered how the girl had become someone so different after the summer leading up to her last year at Hogwarts, though, after marriage to the Lestrange boy, as organized by her father Cygnus. The respect she had once had had mostly disappeared over the expanse of the two summer months in which she was with her family. Bellatrix Black had had the potential to go for a mastery in any subject, for she had been incredibly intelligent, and she would have been able to make a great life for herself, but it hadn't happened. Minerva feared her parents, more than Bellatrix herself, were the reason for this, and she regretted the fact that a bright pupil with the chances to do more in life and follow the right path had never gotten the opportunity to go down that road, because of the family in which she was born.

She had taught all three of the Black sisters, and all three of them had been incredibly different. The fact that Andromeda, the most quiet of them all, would end up being the one to break free from the pull of the Black family, had come as a surprise yet not. Andromeda would, indeed, have been most likely to disagree with the Black practices and instead honor truthful and kinder ones, but that she would have been the one strong enough to fight against it, Minerva never would have thought.

As she let her eyes slide over the people in attendance, she noticed the Minister for Magic in a seat a bit further on her row. There were few people here to say goodbye to Bellatrix Lestrange, and she couldn't say that she was surprised. She knew that Bellatrix had hurt and tormented a great many people, killed and tortured them, with pleasure. For Minerva, it was hard, very hard, to form a connection between that knowledge and the bright pupil she had taught.

As she focused upon the other Black sisters and their families and slid her eyes further up to the back, she noticed Hermione Granger, and she frowned to herself when she didn't see her two friends anywhere. Neither Potter or Weasley was to be seen, and she wondered why this was. As she pondered about this in her head and why Hermione would attend this funeral at all, she failed to register the official had ceased to speak and that people had begun to get up already. She blinked as the sound of people's movements grew louder and got up herself as well, squinting to look for the younger Gryffindor among the other people, as if just seeing Hermione again would answer the questions she would never even ask.

It was only when she gave up on looking for her among the people and moved to leave that she saw Hermione again, head bowed down low, walking in Draco Malfoy's shadow, while he himself walked in his parents'. Momentarily, he doubted about whether or not to say something, but that choice was made for her when the brunette suddenly looked up and looked straight into her eyes. The younger Gryffindor's eyes were a stormy, glazy mocha that Minerva had never seen before in Hermione's gaze, nor anyone else's, and it took her by surprise.

"Professor," she acknowledged when she halted, right where Minerva had.

"Ms. Granger. I'm surprised to see you here, especially without Mr. Weasley and Mr. Potter," she stated.

Hermione Granger merely nodded. She did not feel like getting into the reason why she was there without them. She had, repeatedly, tried to make it clear to them, but neither of them really had, despite the fact that Harry obviously had tried and Ron hadn't at all. "I can't return that. You have attended every single funeral I have, and word has it that you attend them all and were even there when Tom Riddle was buried."

Minerva felt a bit surprised when she heard the younger Gryffindor call the one whose greed for power had resulted in the Battle to begin with by birth name. "I do, and I was," she confirmed, not keen on divulging the reason why she attended them all either to her former pupil, like Hermione wasn't to divulge why she was in attendance of Bellatrix Lestrange's in particular, or so it seemed.

As Hermione nodded again, they began to walk together quietly, their backs to the grave in which Bellatrix Lestrange had only just been laid to rest. Minerva watched Hermione from the corner of her green eyes and frowned again as she saw her hold on to her own forearm tightly in an unnatural way. She chose not to say anything, though, and continued to walk ahead to the gates of the large graveyard so that she could Apparate back to Hogwarts again once past those. She wondered where the younger Gryffindor would go. Her best guess was the Weasleys', where she knew both Potter and she had been guests since the end of the battle.

As if the younger woman had an idea what she was thinking and where she herself was going, she looked at her former mentor as they reached the tall gates and spoke. "Do you really believe Hogwarts can reopen in September already? Is there still a lot of work to be done?"

Minerva was a bit surprised at the question, but she did not show it to her. "I can't be certain," she admitted, "Without magic, I am certain that the answer would have been rather negative. The damage done was very extended."

"Why do you not allow anyone to help you? I am certain that rebuilding the castle would go a lot faster if you did not deny the help of everyone who offers and weren't so set on doing all of it alone. It is not your responsibility to mend what so many have broken."

"People need time to grieve," Minerva simply stated and halted when they were past the gates.

"Grief only consists of so much more than sitting and sobbing together. It also means building back up what was lost to place the losses you've experienced, because that's rarely possible when everything is still a ravage that only reminds of it all. I would be happy to be of assistance to you. I believe it would take my occupied mind off of things now."

Again, Minerva felt rather taken aback at the young Gryffindor's spoken words, but so was she at Hermione's actions, for when she said this, the young brunette grasped her left lower arm tighter than before even, and she felt her mind race as, hopelessly, she tried to find an answer as to why.

"I'm fine," Hermione stated when he saw her former mentor stare and took her hand back from her arm to add to the credibility of the lie she was telling, but her words were weak, and she realized that as she said them, too. She never would have thought that it would be so hard to attend the funeral of the woman who had carved that word into her forearm, 'MUDBLOOD', and had then tortured her so horribly. She felt as if not being with the Weasleys and Harry and being part of their grief had made room for her to grieve for herself in the moments she sat there and the traumas she had experienced raced like an avalanche through her, when there was no one to remind her of Fred or Remus or Tonks, and she wondered if it had been a good idea after all to fight back until they let her go alone.

Minerva saw the hard exterior falter and hint at a sadness within that matched the stormy mocha in her eyes. She couldn't even begin to imagine what the younger Gryffindor and her two friends must have gone through in the year they had all been on the run, and she somehow knew that anything that she could imagine would only scratch the surface. The way in which Hermione behaved was something that she could say she had seen before, though, and recently, but mostly in the aftermath of the long war with Grindelwald, when people had tried to move on too fast. Most especially, in that very moment, Minerva recognized a lot of herself in Hermione, from shortly after the war in which she had lost both of her younger brothers and her mother and father in a big house fire when she had to work overnight at the Ministry. For a long time, Minerva had been angry with herself for not being there.

She had refused to talk to anyone for a long time and tried dealing with it on her own, passing it off as manageable and herself as okay, but she had broken in the end when two months after the end of the battle her youngest brother's seventeenth birthday went by without him. Minerva's head had that day especially filled with so many memories of times in which he had been alive, her family. Fortunately, Poppy had been there when it happened, and she had had a lot of support from her. Hermione Granger undoubtedly had the support of friends and family as well, but they weren't there, and she was showing the cracks. She didn't believe that it was a good idea for Hermione to be alone right now.

"Are you expected back by the Weasleys?"

"No," Hermione said. "I told them I would go by my parents afterwards, but I'm just not really sure if I'm going yet. They haven't been back for long, and they've missed a lot and expect me to fill in the gaps, and I am not certain if I'm up for that right now."

"What do you say to having a cup of tea?" Minerva suggested. "Then you can see how much has been rebuilt."

Hermione wasn't entirely sure if she should or shouldn't at first, but when she looked up at Minerva McGonagall and weighed all her options: the Weasleys, her parents, Hogwarts or hanging about somewhere alone, undoubtedly purposelessly, she nodded her consent. She was kind of curious how much had been rebuilt, indeed, and, minutes later, she was looking up, quite perplexed, at the fully-restored Great Hall, one Hermione remembered as a big ravage right after the battle.

"It looks as I remember it," Hermione whispered, and she tried to suppress the tears in her eyes as she took the place of her childhood in. Then she looked down once again, not at all at Minerva. She still remembered the very first day she set foot on the domain, in the big castle… laid eyes upon the Great Hall and then Gryffindor Tower and over the course of the next days and weeks the rest of the fabled institution, the images that fit with the fact she had already read so often by then.

That had been all before the past few months, the war, before… Again, she reached for her lower arm and grasped it hard –– so hard it should have hurt, but she didn't feel the pain. Hermione Granger blinked rapidly to try and hide her feelings, locking them back up deep inside for only her to see. As the girl looked up at last, to try to look less suspicious in her act, she found emerald green eyes gazing at her knowingly. "Hermione, why are you holding onto your lower arm so feverishly?"

When the younger Gryffindor didn't answer her, the older witch stepped closer, to which Hermione took a step back and pulled her arm and whatever she was hiding up against her. Holding eye contact with the brunette, Minerva tried to convey the honest worry she felt in her look. Hermione did not step back again as she stepped closer once more. Carefully, she pulled the younger woman's arm back without her resistance then pushed the sleeve of her cardigan up to reveal the harsh red and angry cuts of a carved word that she could read upside down as 'MUDBLOOD'.

"What has happened to your arm, Hermione?" Minerva whispered. She forced herself to look from the carved eight-letter word in otherwise-unmarred alabaster skin up in mocha eyes.

Seeing the words in her skin again cast Hermione immediately back to the moment when Bellatrix Lestrange had cut them in her flesh. She was sent back to the very moment the blood still dripped from the letters in her arm, saw the harsh images flash before her mocha eyes, and she gasped as the emotion overwhelmed her completely. "Bellatrix Lestrange… tortured…" she managed before her knees buckled underneath her and she fell against Minerva, who just managed to capture her.

Minerva suddenly understood a whole lot more as she held the younger woman in her arms, sitting down on her knees and taking Hermione with her, Hermione's weight as she sobbed with emotion too much for Minerva to hold up. She must have been keeping this in for so long now. This must be the reason why she attended Bellatrix's funeral. Mocha eyes upon marred skin, she swallowed as she remembered the girl she had taught, who never would have been capable of such unless the right buttons were pushed. A look upon the scars told Minerva that they must have been carved in by a magical dark blade, which would ensure that the word would never truly heal, never be completely hidden by any charm or potion, but instead, be visible through everything to remind the young Gryffindor of her heritage and what Voldemort and his Death Eaters thought of it.

"You're safe now," Minerva whispered, gently rocking her as she held her against her body, and she disgusted herself for saying just that, because she knew that even though Bellatrix was gone, Hermione was not safe in her mind. Her mind would play tricks on her for so long, and she would need a lot of time to heal.

"I know…" Hermione whispered, brokenly, before pushing her nose deep into Minerva's neck and smelling her skin and letting the soothing aroma of her penetrate her nostrils.

Surprise filled Minerva as she heard those words, but then she realized her own feelings and understood. She, too, had not quite felt as at ease as she did now ever since the battle. Right now, caring of Hermione, she had stopped looking over her shoulder, stopped being scared and let the comfort of having Hermione in her arms overcome her as Hermione let the comfort of her former mentor's arms holding her overcome her as well. It was strange that just being held could have such an effect, but it really made a huge difference.

"Don't let go…" Hermione begged, feeling safer than she ever even remembered being, and the thought of letting go made her just want to stop breathing. It was an incredibly intense feeling.

"I won't," Minerva said, and as she did, she knew she meant it. As she did, she knew she would hold her for as long as Hermione needed. Merlin knew she needed it as well.


End file.
